Page 61 of Jealous of the Clouds
Shondell, a knife held casually at her side, stood over Ted and Karl.
Karl was at his desk, staring up at Shondell, mouth hanging open, terror in his eyes.
Ted was slumped in a chair nearby, his chest a riot of crimson.
I winced, groping for the wall beside me.
No. I shuddered, a scream poised at my lips.
But it was simply a hallucination, born of terror. Ted stared at me, his expression one of mute horror.
But he was alive. And the blood I thought I’d seen? All in my mind. I suppose being this stressed, it would be more surprising if Ididn’thallucinate.
They both were breathing and, at least for now, unharmed.
Shondell smiled. “I’m glad you’re here, Camille. You need to be witness to this.”
I was too scared to ask what I was being asked to witness. A murder? Torture? The last thing my tired old eyes would ever see?
Without her gaze leaving mine, she said, “You know what? Turn the recording back on, Karl. Your audience deserves to hear this.”
I wanted to call 911, but couldn’t see any way I could get my phone out, hang up on Ted’s call, and punch in the three digits. I still wanted all of this to be on record, if only for posterity, for prosecution once we were all bloodied corpses.
All of us were frozen, numb, paralyzed in the blinding headlights of what might come next.
But all Shondell did was move to the window, standing near it to stare outside at the darkening sky.
Karl was fiddling with the controls on the virtual sound board of his iMac. Ted stared at me, pleading, but I had no idea for what. What could I do?
She kept the knife in her hand. She began to speak. Her voice, already deep, came out deeper, more masculine. “Hey, remember me? I’m Richard Blake and I’m scared Joshua Kade might stab me with that big old knife of his.” She laughed. AndI remembered the podcast where Bailey had told his listeners all about the fate of Richard Blake and his brush with murder.
Oh my god. It was her. It was her. Even back then, pulling the strings, faking us all out.
Shondell then continued, in her own voice. “Josh was both a father and a brother to me.” She let out another short, sharp bark of laughter. “Not in aChinatownsort of way, but just in the sense that he cared for me as a father would, as a mother would too, if I’m being honest. I know he diapered me and fed me a bottle when I was a baby, later he would push me around our neighborhood in a stroller, enduring the taunts of other boys, who called him a sissy. He told me he didn’t care. He was lucky, privileged to take care of me.
“I adored that kid. And I continued to adore him as I watched him change. I saw what the early bullying wrought, and the abuse my father heaped on him, did. It didn’t change my opinion. I still loved him and I understood where his selfish, cruel side continued to emerge.
“He was a lost soul. That’s what I told myself. He only wanted love. But he could never rest easy in the fact that he’d found it. With his expectations, I came to know he’d never find love because the kind of love he wanted was impossible. It was too demanding, too needy.”
“I did a bad thing, a very bad thing, thinking I was protecting my brother from harm. Yes, Karl, I do regret it. I stole not only a beloved life from you and your family, I stole the possibility of a hope, of a future together. I deeply regret it.
“In a twisted way, my taking Josh’s life was a way of making things up to you. An eye for an eye kind of thing—setting things straight. Justice? Maybe. Is there really such a thing? To my mind, justice would be resurrecting Reggie for you, giving back the years together I robbed from you.”
Karl’s eyes shone. “What about your mother?”
“What about her?”
“Did you kill her too? Or was that Josh?”
“My own ma? No, are you crazy?”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
“Our mother died of lung cancer two years ago.” Shondell sighed. “But let’s keep to the subject. She was a complicated woman who had a miserable life with our father. But now, I need to even the score, to try to make amends for what had happened to Reggie. I know, the logic isn’t there, but the emotion is.
“I was certain Josh would have killedyou, Ted. I think he may have killed others, and if he did, I fear I was the one who gave him the idea to employ this lethal way of problem-solving. But even I can’t say for sure he ever snuffed anyone’s life out. He was a sociopath—it takes one to know one—and it wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover he’d killed people. And what I’m afraid of the most—I set him on the path of murder.” She looked down for a long time. “There’s blood on my hands.”
She lifted her head, turned back to us, and closed her eyes. Pain was writ large across her features. She trembled. In spite of everything, my heart ached for her.
